


echoes

by sorrymom



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, not really at all compliant with the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26095198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrymom/pseuds/sorrymom
Summary: Azula is always the first name, the gut-check response, the thought Ty Lee flees to when she’s uncertain. In the temple of her mind Azula is the statue at the center, golden and immortal with a taut, metallic smile.Ty Lee is nineteen. Azula is forever not.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar), minor Mai/Zuko - Relationship
Comments: 19
Kudos: 195





	echoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [long_live](https://archiveofourown.org/users/long_live/gifts).



> there is a very brief implication of self-harm

Suki told her something once, about how if you’re in the woods and for whatever reason you end up face to face with a platypus bear, it’s best not to run. It’s best to stay still, and breathe slow. 

“It might seem counterintuitive,” the warrior explained, wiping a cloth across a knife, “but you shouldn’t run. You might end up going in the direction of the pups.” 

Suki is not at all like Azula. Suki always wants to explain why something is right, why something makes sense. She’s a good tour guide for the island— _if you’re ever lost, the moss always grows on the north side of the trees_ and then a long explanation, about sunlight, about the big harmonious nature of the world and how it is always littered with signs. 

Ty Lee guesses that’s what it’s like, to grow up somewhere founded by an avatar instead of a tyrant. She never really thought about the second life, the spiritual world, before she was here. Every day, she passes the shadow of Kyoshi’s totem in the center of the village. Everyone is so proud. Everyone talks like she’s a woman they had all known, albeit distantly. 

“She preferred women,” Suki says, one day, unprompted. They’re in the woods, looking for mushrooms after a fresh spring rain, and Ty Lee’s first thought is ‘she’s talking about Azula’. Azula is always the first name, the gut-check response, the thought Ty Lee flees to when she’s uncertain. In the temple of her mind, Azula is the statue at the center, golden and immortal with a taut, metallic smile. 

“Avatar Kyoshi,” Suki continues, clarifies, her grey eyes scanning Ty Lee’s face. “Do you— how do you feel about that?” 

“To each her own,” Ty Lee chirps, plucking a brownish mushroom from the elderly roots of an oak. 

“Oh.” Suki doesn’t blush, at least not when Sokka isn’t around, but there’s a shudder of embarrassment through her body. “I thought— we all thought that—” 

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Ty Lee says from the script in her brain. “I’m sure it works for some people.” 

“Right.” 

The rest of the afternoon is mostly silent. They go back to the village when the afternoon storm rolls from the ocean. 

+

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Mai is drawling. They’re in the Academy for Girls library. Azula is reading ancient love poetry with a mocking glee. Ty Lee’s head is tucked against her shoulder, feeling all the vibrations of Azula’s voice rising from her lungs to her mouth to the still, musty air. 

“Such a romantic,” Azula chides, glancing up from the scroll to make sure she’s bothering Mai enough. “Or just desperate enough?” 

Mai picks at her nails. This is before she learns which ticks to suppress, how to bring an armor of long sleeves and a straight-set mouth around herself, to boil inside until she hurts Azula back. “It’s not desperate. Some people are like that.” 

“ _Like that_.” Azula never had to learn to hide. Her ire is clear, and Ty Lee doesn’t know why it feels so personal for once. “Maybe it’s a way to make sure certain people don’t breed.” 

She rolls the scroll up now, though Ty Lee expects her to rip it. It’s always like that— expecting the worst, and then Azula does something normal, something halfway polite, and Ty Lee’s heart glows. 

Months later, Ty Lee drops a calligraphy brush in Azula’s dormitory and it rolls under the bed. She finds the scroll there. At first she thinks Azula hadn’t stolen it— how could someone so brilliant, so crafty, pick such a childish hiding place? But when the princess sees the papers laid limp across Ty Lee’s lap, she throws her head back and lets out a laugh that chills like lightning through Ty Lee’s chest. 

“I meant to burn that,” she says, hand out, palm up, waiting. 

Ty Lee’s fingers smooth over the long-dried black ink, the thin innocence of the paper. “They’re just words, Azula,” she says quietly. Quietly so that, if Azula doesn’t want to argue, she can ignore it. She can snatch the scroll and have her way. 

“Give it to me.” 

Rings of fire burn out in ripples from Azula’s fingertips, the paper curling and black and then not there at all. Ty Lee opens the window so the smoke can flee. 

+

Ty Lee visited Azula in prison three times. 

“You shouldn’t,” Mai had said, and then apologetically— like she was afraid that sleeping in Azula’s old bedroom, wearing her crown, was transforming her into the same sort of master— “But no one will stop you.” 

The first two times Azula had nothing to say, but plenty to scream. It was a tantrum. It was the first time that Ty Lee thought that maybe Azula had loved her; this broken, blue fire heart howling through the bars. 

Then, the third time, the last time— just after Zuko’s coronation, wearing the white Kyoshi make-up that Suki had painted across her face— Azula was sunken and gaunt. She lifted her face and laughed. Not high-pitched, not crazed— the squeaky, unflattering, joyous laugh she had when someone slipped in a puddle or knocked over a drink onto someone else’s lap. She always liked slapstick, the ridiculous, and Ty Lee is glad for the make-up because Azula is laughing at her and heat rises in her cheeks. 

“A girl,” Azula marvels, gasping happily, “who was so afraid of being confused for her sisters.” 

Maybe this is why Ty Lee had loved her. Azula always saw her, however unflattering— saw her like a map, like a battle. The useful parts— the high ground, the fortresses— and the deficits. The weak, rotting parts. The starving armies, the flimsy tents. Azula saw it all and still said, ‘come with me.’ 

“You really are an incredible idiot.” 

+

Months later, Ty Lee is walking alone on the docks when she knows what she should have said. It’s always like this. She even thinks of fist-fights like this— where her fingers could have fallen, a pressure point that would have been easier to reach, less flashy, more industrious. But she’s a performer. She’s a person who needs a script, and then she’ll spend every night after critiquing her own inflections, the accidental stutters. Feel on her knuckles the ghost of Azula’s waist before the princess crumpled. 

Months later, Ty Lee is walking alone on the docks when she knows she should have said: 

_Now I want to be like everyone._

__

__

_I don’t want to be special if it’s only to someone like you._

_The way you love me hurts._

And then what would Azula have done? Laughed? Screamed? Ordered, simply and quietly, for her to get out. 

It would end up the same. That’s the problem. There was no place in the myth of Azula where a different word, a different action, would lead to any other conclusion. She was doomed the day her mother left.

+

She thinks about Mai sometimes. The other woman doesn’t write often, and Ty Lee is glad she doesn’t make up excuses. They’ve never been exactly kind to each other, never warm or close. It’s funny that Azula kept them together like she did. The cynical part of Ty Lee’s brain— a part that has been getting bigger, heavier— thinks that Azula purposefully wanted them to never bond against her. 

There it is again. Everything circling back to a pulse of Azula, Azula, Azula. 

She thinks about Mai sometimes. Mai who never wanted to be Fire Lady, but always wanted Zuko. Mai who never wanted a child but now she has one. 

Izumi. Which means fountain. Which means nothing, and that’s on purpose. 

There would be no more Azulons or Sozins or Ozais now. Maybe, in a generation, some Zukos and Mais and Irohs and Rokus and Lu Tens. 

+

“We can never marry,” Azula says, days after the first time Ty Lee kisses her. They’re in the caves below Ba Sing Se and Ty Lee’s heart is singing because it is so unbearably innocent, for Azula to think that because they kissed they must now talk about marriage and technicalities and all the impossibility of each other with swollen lips.

“I know that,” Ty Lee scolds. She wonders if, now that they are joined like this, if she can change. If she can be playful more easily with Azula, poke at her ribs, maybe even laugh at her. Azula had kissed her back. Azula had cried for hours after. Maybe now— 

“But perhaps when I’m Fire Lord,” Azula wonders aloud, looking up at the amethyst stalactites shining like chandeliers. “It could be different.” 

It’s the only time Azula promises Ty Lee something she wants. 

+

“The aura thing is made-up, right?” It’s Sokka who asks, and he gets a sharp elbow to the rib from Suki. Unfortunately the commotion quiets everyone at the table, watching as he scrambles and overreacts and Suki hisses to be polite, be respectful. Suki always treats her delicately. She’s not sure why. 

“Of course not,” Ty Lee says brightly, reaching for her drink. 

Sokka frowns. “But it doesn’t make sense.” 

“ _Sokka_ ,” Suki warns. 

“I mean why can _she_ see auras but we can’t? Or even Aang—” His voice rises in pitch as he goes on. 

“I just see them,” Ty Lee says simply. 

+

The aura thing is made up. When she was young, it was a fantasy she had. Ty Lin is a stormy grey, because she’s moody. Ty Lum is a wandering yellow. Ty Lao is a blaring orange. 

_I’m the one who can see what no one else can._

_I’m the special one._

It always bothered Mai, too, before she got exhausted with arguing about it. But Azula completely ignored it. Not in a way that led Ty Lee to think the princess believed her— it was more like a silent, secret agreement between them— we have our lies. Let’s keep to them. 

+

Sometime in the spring, Ty Lee starts sleeping with one of the other warriors. Her name is Mili and Ty Lee decides to love her. She’s not exactly pretty, but it doesn’t matter. In the dark, her arms are thin and strong like Azula’s, and her voice wavers at the right pitch. She rakes her nails down Ty Lee’s chest whenever Ty Lee asks for it, which may be suspiciously often, and in the morning she does not comment when Ty Lee hovers in front of the mirror, shirtless, tracing the angry red lines.

+

. “Could you ever do it to yourself,” Azula had asked once. It was before Ba Sing Se, before the drill. They were at the edge of a lake, the eel hounds drinking with bowed heads. 

“I don’t think so,” Ty Lee says, pressing a thumb against the pressure point behind her ear experimentally. 

“Father says a person could bite off their own thumb.” 

“But they don’t,” Ty Lee giggles. It is always good to giggle, because then Azula knows she isn’t being critiqued. “No one wants to hurt themselves.” 

Azula’s eyes go darker. “Have you ever wondered why Mai wears long sleeves?” 

Something sick and heavy twists in Ty Lee’s stomach. “For the knives.” 

“Exactly.” Azula stretches her arms above her head. Then, as superior as always, “There’s a lot you don’t understand about people, Ty Lee.” 

+

Ty Lee never slept with Azula. They never even shared a bed. They were too young— too young to even desire each other that fully. 

But now Ty Lee is older. 

_Do you ever do it to yourself_ , fantasy Azula asks, but she doesn’t mean something ugly. Fantasy Azula stands at the edge of the bed, looking down at Ty Lee. 

“Yes,” Ty Lee murmurs. 

_And you think about me?_

“Only you.” 

Azula would smile at that. She was always possessive. It was the only way Ty Lee knew she loved her. 

Azula would have loved this— Ty Lee, twisting and whining on a bed, touching herself, begging. But maybe there was more. Maybe Azula would have wanted to be cradled and touched softly. Maybe she would have needed the praise whispered in her ear, and Ty Lee had always been such a sure spring of it. Sometimes Ty Lee is touching herself for Azula and sometimes her hand is Azula’s and sometimes she is herself touching Azula, whispering ‘so pretty’ and ‘so perfect’ and other things that could never have saved either of them. 

+

A letter comes from the Fire Lord addressed to Ty Lee. 

Suki hovers over her shoulder when Ty Lee breaks the wax seal with a knife. 

It’s odd because usually, if there is a letter, it’s from Mai. It comes with a different seal. Zuko has never particularly liked her or cared for her or noticed her, but here are three pages of his hurried handwriting. 

Suki apparently reads faster than Ty Lee, because she lets out a huff of distaste when Ty Lee is still scanning through the formalities. “The gall,” she spits. 

Then Ty Lee finds it. 

_Azula has requested an audience with you._

And then, in typical Zuko fashion: 

_Not really an audience. It’s not official. She asked Mai and Mai thought it was best not to tell you, but that doesn’t—_ a scratched out line— _seem fair. To you, I mean. Or her I guess._

Ty Lee is more shocked that Mai and Azula have talked than that Azula would want to see her. Azula is too hateful to not want a doll to tear apart. 

“You shouldn’t go,” Suki says, firm and sure and so unaware. Azula is a lantern in the uncertain dark. Ty Lee is a moth who thinks the light is enough to eat, enough to survive with. 

_You really are an idiot,_ fantasy Azula says, proud, in the shadows. 

+

Sokka is the one to come and get her, take her on one of those Water Tribe skiffs back to the Fire Nation. 

“So,” he says. He hasn’t outgrown his awkwardness, his voice that’s too loud even when the wind is screeching over the sea. “You ever try those, uh. Berries? In the woods?” 

“I thought they were poisonous.”

“Oh, they are.” He grins. “But in a fun way.” 

It takes almost a month to get back to the capital, much slower than the Fire Nation warships that had brought Ty Lee back with Azula. Sometimes there are storms and Ty Lee stands on the deck, watching distant lightning touch down against the sea, each strike restarting her heart. 

“Did Zuko tell you why she wants to see you?” Sokka asks one night, just hours before they’ll dock and Ty Lee will be home. 

“No, why?” 

He shrugs. “I dunno. If you want my opinion—” Ty Lee doesn’t really— “She’s just crazy. I mean, if someone did that to me I’d never want to see them again.” 

She isn’t sure who he means. Azula had hurt her and she had hurt Azula. They were equals now. 

“You’re a lucky person,” she says. 

“Is that some more aura stuff or—” 

She smiles stiffly. “There’s a lot you don’t understand about people.”

+

Izumi does not look at all like Azula and it should not break Ty Lee’s heart. 

“I don’t want another,” Mai says. They’re watching the toddler play with the turtle ducks. 

“What does Zuko want?” 

Mai shrugs. She doesn’t wear her hair in buns anymore. Ty Lee wonders what’s changed about herself, and if Mai has noticed. “Everyone keeps asking me that, but I don’t see why it matters.” 

“Well he is—” 

“The _man_ ,” Mai sneers. 

“I— no. I meant—” Ty Lee hasn’t stammered in so long. It’s harder to be with Mai without the buffer of Azula, who would always interrupt masterfully, explain Ty Lee’s thoughts in yes, unkind, but yes, accurate terms. “The Royal family has to—” 

“Zuko is not the astounding father everyone expected him to be.” And then, softer, “he’s not the father he expected himself to be.” 

“Oh.” 

“It’s not as easy to fix our parents mistakes as we thought.” Mai tugs at her sleeves. “Sometimes I catch myself saying things, doing things, and it’s as if I’m my own mother. I understand her better now, I think. But what is that worth to Izumi? Tell her, you’re crying now but in twenty years when you have your own kid you’ll understand me?”

“I don’t know.” 

_It’s good people like us can’t breed,_ fantasy Azula says. She’s standing under the willow, looking down at Izumi with a nervous disgust. 

“I knew you’d come back.” Mai, since becoming the Fire Lady, has gotten better at changing the subject. It’s almost diplomatic. “She still has her claws in you.” 

“I came to see you too,” Ty Lee tries. 

_You’re a terrible liar,_ Azula purrs. She’s laying in the grass now, burning blades between her fingertips. _I always liked that about you._

“Half of me wants you to stay,” Mai sighs. “And half of me wants to never see you again.” 

Ty Lee laughs, because it’s the kindest, most honest thing Mai has maybe ever said to her. “I probably won’t stay. I actually— I met someone on the island.” 

_Terrible,_ Azula calls. 

“She’s—” and Ty Lee waits for a reaction that Mai doesn’t give. “She’s nice.” 

The Fire Lady snorts. “You don’t like nice girls.” 

They’re quiet for a while, watching Izumi sing to the turtleducks and the red leaves breeze down. 

“I think about that thing you said, sometimes,” Ty Lee murmurs. “About— loving Zuko. More than you feared her.” 

Mai is perfectly still. 

“I never— I feared her more than I loved her.”

_Which makes you like everyone else,_ Azula’s breath ghosts over Ty Lee’s neck. 

“What you did was...brave. Even braver than I thought it was.” 

Ty Lee still doesn’t understand herself, at fourteen, ruining Azula. She hadn’t loved Mai. She hadn’t wanted to save Zuko. The flattering, untrue version is that she knew it would be worse for Azula’s own psyche to hurt Mai, to hurt Zuko. She was _saving_ Azula. 

But what’s true is smaller and uglier. She had wanted Azula to prove that she loved her back. She wanted to know if Azula could forgive her. 

_Idiot._

+

Azula isn’t being kept in a traditional cell. It’s fashioned like a bedroom, normal except for the bars on the window. The lack of a mirror. 

The guards are not Fire Nation soldiers but Kyoshi Warriors. 

“Zuzu doesn’t trust them.” That’s the first thing out of Azula’s— real Azula’s— mouth. It’s such a perfect shape. Nearly nothing has changed about her— except maybe she’s taller, but it’s hard to tell because Ty Lee is also taller. Her hair is dark, her skin is healthy and bright. Ty Lee expected her to be rotting, but if anything she’s been preserved. 

“What?” Ty Lee says dumbly. It’s suddenly so normal. In a bedroom. Azula’s nails are shorter. There’s too much information to catalogue and—

“You’re wondering why it’s those foreigners and not the traitors guarding me.” Azula is looking at Ty Lee as if it’s easy to. “And I have several theories.” 

“Oh— okay, I—” 

“First, it’s the obvious one. Zuzu thinks everyone is against him, which is funny, because everyone is actually against me.” She begins pacing, and Ty Lee winces at the first few footfalls against the floor. “But you can’t reason with him. Second, they’re here to torture me.” 

“They’re hurting you?” 

“No,” Azula sears. 

“Oh.” Ty Lee is glad she is barefaced today. She did it on purpose, to not offend— 

“They all look like you.” Azula pauses, looks over her shoulder. She is as tense as a bowstring. “That’s a confession, Ty Lee.” 

“I—”

“You’re such an idiot,” Azula scoffs, resuming her circuit around the bedroom. She’s like a circus animal in their cage— the gait of a king, of a killer, all of the danger removed, except— 

Ty Lee heard about what happened to Ozai. Perhaps the Avatar had decided Azula deserved the same fate. “Can you bend?”

“I’m not impotent.” Azula hands hurry over the tie around her waist and Ty Lee barely has enough time to cover her eyes before her robe is open. “Don’t be a child, Ty Lee. It’s technically your handiwork.” 

Fastened around the smooth, unmarred skin of Azula’s bare torso is a metal contraption, twisting toward what Ty Lee knows are two pressure points. The ones she hit with her knuckles at Boiling Rock. 

“The metalbending rat made it. Just enough pressure to keep me from getting anything more than smoke,” Azula explains, turning so Ty Lee can see there isn’t a lock. It’s sealed together. “Are you her muse now?” 

“No,” Ty Lee whispers— as an answer, as disbelief. 

“That’s a shame. I know how you love an audience.” 

_So do you,_ fantasy Azula spits at real Azula and Ty Lee feels sick and dizzy and undeserving of every day without pain she has had since she left the Fire Nation. 

“I suppose I do too,” real Azula drawls. “That’s why we were so good together.” 

“We weren’t good together.” 

“Yes, everyone loves to say that. But I’ve had a lot more time to think than most people.” 

Ty Lee looks down at her hands. These same thumbs, now cast in iron, forever pressing against— 

“I’ve only thought about you.” 

_Liar,_ fantasy Azula says. 

“Okay, that’s not true,” real Azula amends. “But I’ve felt you, on my skin, for five years.” Here, the air shifts. Azula is closer now, and then even closer— her hands on the sides of Ty Lee’s chair, an electric crackling static, the hairs on the back of Ty Lee’s neck raising in anticipation— “And I want you to know.” 

“That’s all?” Ty Lee whispers into the two inches of space between their lips. 

Azula’s thin eyebrows furrow in disgusted confusion. “Is that not enough?” 

Ty Lee can’t believe the stunning innocence of it. Call a girl across an ocean, tell her you hate her so much you love her, and then— what did Azula expect? A kiss? An escape? A redemption? 

“We can never marry,” Azula continues, her hand hovering just below Ty Lee’s jaw. “But perhaps when I’m Fire Lord, it could be different.” 

“‘Zula,” Ty Lee whimpers, and in each other’s arms they are both fourteen again on the three-tiered throne inside the drill, in the luminescent caves beneath Ba Sing Se’s palace, young and equally stupid and equally liars grasping each other’s hands in the dark. 

“Ty Lee,” Azula answers, and her lips are Ty Lee’s neck, and they are nineteen. Or, Ty Lee is nineteen and Azula is forever not. She’s in the cage of the past and she’ll carry it with her, the bruises on her back, and she is still doomed. 

+

Ty Lee doesn’t wait for Sokka to go back to Kyoshi Island. She pays a sleazy crew on the docks in the bay to take her back, and they don’t know who she is or care. When she is back in the village, she rushes to her room and smears the warpaint over her face.

+

There is one good memory, one memory that Ty Lee won’t take away from herself. 

It was before the Day of Black Sun.

Azula had thrown open the curtains in her room and said ‘teach me.’ 

Ty Lee had laid on her bed, naked and prone, letting Azula prod at her pressure points. She never wavered. She never kissed Ty Lee’s stomach or brushed up her chest or did anything other than push her thumb deeper and deeper against Ty Lee’s side. 

It’s hard to lock that bedroom door against the future. Against Suki saying, years later in the forest, ‘it might seem counterintuitive but you shouldn’t run.’ 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading<3 i have had this story in my head since i was like. 13. mostly
> 
> [also isn't this song sort of about tyzula](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK9EImqaKvI)


End file.
